A common requirement in the design of machines is to create a seal between a shaft and annular bore; the purpose of which varies, but could include retaining lubrication in a cavity, forming a pressure seal for hydraulic or pneumatic applications or excluding environmental contaminants. In the typical case, the shaft will often be subject to rotation or translation relative to the bore. For the purposes of the description herein, the bore will be assumed to be a “stationary” portion and the shaft will be a “moving” portion. Typically, an engineer must select a seal (or set of seals) from a vast array of different commercially available seal types that have been custom designed for specific performance under a specific set of circumstances. The selection and design of seals and seal assemblies will depend on design envelope, including the geometry limitations within which the design must fit, nature of the movement between the components, shaft and bore materials, media to be sealed against, temperature, service life, specific controlled leak rate, contaminant exposure, and other compatibility requirements. Much research and design effort continues to be done in this field and the proper selection of seals is a critical part of almost any application. For many applications characterized by high or very low pressures, high or very low temperatures, high speeds, long service life or aggressive media the available seals meeting all the requirements share the common drawback that for effective use, the shaft and bore must be concentric to within an extremely close tolerance (often on the order of 0.001 in or less).
This leads to one of the most common forms of seal failure, which is generally referred to as shaft eccentricity. Due to the result of mounting misalignments, manufacturing deviations in the shaft or bore axis, high side-loads or accumulated damage to the shaft or bore, the motion of the shaft can attain a much higher level of eccentricity with respect to the bore. The result of this eccentricity generates an uneven seal load and/or intermittent or positional separation between the shaft and seal or between seal and bore that can cause outright failure, increased leak rate, heat buildup or invasion of contaminants resulting in a great reduction of seal life, often by 90% or more.
It may also be desirable to accommodate large intentional movements of the shaft along the axis, which may or may not also be rotating. In such cases, the seal may be needed to: A) remain in position and slide along the shaft; or B) move to a large degree along the axis, which may or may not form a dynamic seal.
In light of these problems there has been some limited design work done in the creation of seals that allow for an increased degree of eccentricity in the shafts. The details of such prior designs can be found in the prior artwork:                U.S. Pat. No. 4,588,195 A—Floating lip seal assembly with convoluted flexible section        U.S. Pat. No. 7,963,526 B2—Pre-lubricated multi-lipped radial shaft seal with large radial offset accommodation.        EP 1,096,169 A3—Shaft seal for eccentric air brake lever in which a shaft part 38 and a bore/annular part 46 are connected by flexible piece 50 that is spaced radially from each seal component, forming a u-shape. The design is limited to a specific seal and bore geometry. Furthermore, the seal assembly, being radially stacked, results in a large radial section area required between the shaft and the bore. In this design, having a convolution across the linear axis, proper function is limited to rotational motion only, and the seal will not function appropriately in a translating (linear motion) application.        
In the prior art, the specific design of the sealing element means that only a very specific set of sealing problems may be effectively solved. Additionally, the complexity of manufacture and design of the prior art prohibits their use in small section applications, where there is minimal radial space between the bore and shaft. Additionally, the specificity of and complexity of the design means that their scope of use is limited to very specific applications and cannot easily be or selected for use with small geometry, high pressure/temperature combinations, cryogenic temperatures, or highly abrasive media.
It is therefore beneficial to develop a method and device for mounting any commercially available shaft seal in a manner which would greatly increase the allowable shaft/bore eccentricity. Thus allowing the engineer far more options when selecting seal types, or setting machine design tolerances.